


touch

by indefinissable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Worship, Guilt, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore (mentioned), Post-Season/Series 11, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9198329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefinissable/pseuds/indefinissable
Summary: Castiel sees what happened to Sam in Grangeville. He doesn’t react well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime in early Season 12.

Castiel undresses Sam slowly, piece by piece, the way he always does. With Cas there’s rarely any rush, none of the fast-paced, desperate urgency that guided so many of Sam’s past escapades, tongues and teeth and bodies half-clothed. No, Castiel does this the same way he does everything else, with deep concentration, intent, and just a hint of reverence. That isn’t to say it lacks intimacy—there are volumes of not-quite-worldly desire in the worshipful way Castiel cradles Sam’s foot as he removes his boot, thumb stroking the knob of his ankle and the delicate hairs there.

They haven’t done this in a long time, not since those few weeks Castiel spent recovering in Sam’s room last year, before Lucifer broke free and Mary came back and there were several hazy periods of torture and imprisonment. For a while Sam wondered if things had shifted irrevocably between the two of them, whether that space between his ribs had been hollowed out completely by Castiel’s— _Lucifer’s_ —grasping fingers and replaced by a dull, aching nausea. That was a long, loud stretch of time where Sam wondered often whether anything was real, thought maybe he was dead and no one else had quite caught on yet.

Now, Castiel touches him with reassuring solidity, steady and firm and real real real. It helps Sam feel grounded, stable, not so much like a ghost that might catch fire and fade away at any moment.

“Lift your arms,” Castiel murmurs, warm and low, and Sam obeys without thinking. Castiel pulls the shirt off and Sam’s exposed skin prickles in the air.

It takes Sam a long, suspended moment to realize that Cas is no longer touching him, is bowed down with the shirt clutched tight in his hands. Then Castiel makes a soft, wounded noise and reaches out to touch Sam’s bare abdomen.

Sam goes cold at once, like being submerged in ice water. The scar on his belly has healed and faded since last spring, but the evidence of the bullet that tore through his guts is still there—raised pink and uneven from Dean’s fumbling attempts at field medicine and treatment in an understocked, understaffed hospital.

“Cas,” Sam says, stumbling over his tongue as Castiel’s finger traces the ridges of scar tissue, the ragged lines left by stitches he had burst and replaced several times in long weeks of healing. “Don’t.”

Castiel makes the hurt sound again and draws his hand back. He doesn’t look at Sam. When he speaks, his voice is a dry whisper. “Was this painful?”

Sam says, “Um.”

He remembers most of it in flashes—the searing, intense pain in his gut that kept whiting out his vision, the blood dripping slick between his fingers quicker than he could stop it, the hard press of a palm at his throat, cutting off his air supply. As the morning light rose weak through the trees a deadening numbness had set into his hands and feet and a floating, half-there feeling settled over him, like he was a long-dead spirit still roaming the forest, aimless and lost until his knees gave out and the staggering pain came back.

He settles on, “When I was awake, yeah.”

Cas flinches hard. He reaches out again and settles a palm on the scar, covering the marred skin in its entirety. “This should have killed you.” Sam can hear the guilt there, the intense self-loathing. Castiel’s voice breaks when he says, “Sam.”

Sam knows he’s meant to be dead. The wrongness of being alive is something he has carried with him for close to a decade now, since he first sputtered awake alone and shivering on a bloodstained mattress in an abandoned cabin with his back aching something fierce. From that moment he has quietly borne the knowledge like an extra limb, one he’s grown accustomed to but which still sometimes strikes him with a gut-churning sense of wrong. Last spring, during the three days Dean had forced him to lie still in a motel bed and let the hole in his stomach heal, Sam had awoken more than once to his brother at his bedside, head clasped in his hands and bowed as though in prayer, or in mourning. The doctors had told him it was a miracle he survived.

Castiel is still speaking, his palm pressed warm and real to Sam’s abdomen, a litany of _could have died_ and _my fault_ and _I was so selfish, so blind_.

Sam takes Castiel’s hand and pulls it free of his body, cradles it in both of his. Castiel looks up at him then. His face is twisted with guilt and he’s gazing at their joined hands like he can still see Sam’s blood there, on both of them, dripping slick between the fingers and grasping at the pulsing life inside Sam’s ribcage.

“Cas,” Sam says, and falters. He knows Castiel learned long ago that words should always be mistrusted, but he’s looking at Sam a little desperately, like maybe he has the power to grant absolution for all the sins Cas imagines he’s committed.

Instead of speaking, Sam draws their joined hands to his chest, splays Castiel’s palm flat over his heart where it beats steady and regular, pumping blood through his body.

“I’m alive,” Sam says. “Cas, I’m alive. That’s real.”

Castiel shudders, tips his head forward like he’s praying, or receiving Holy Communion. His fingers flex against Sam’s chest, the nails digging into the skin while Sam repeats the words quietly until they lose all meaning and turn to disjointed scraps of sound.

Eventually, Castiel uncurls silently from the floor and kneels up straight. “Sam,” he says, and touches his free hand where Sam is still clasping the other to his chest. “Sam.”

Sam trips over the words, stumbles into silence.

“Thank you,” Castiel says, reaching up to grasp the back of Sam’s neck and bring their foreheads together. “That’s enough. Thank you.”

Sam closes his eyes and listens to Castiel’s breathing, rhythmic and even in the space between them. Alive and moving and _real real real_. When Sam releases Castiel’s hand it stays where it is, warm and solid against his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr [@withthedemonblood](http://withthedemonblood.tumblr.com/).


End file.
